On
April 1-2, a team of RISD students participated
in this year’s NASA Great Moonbuggy
Race
in Huntsville, AL, competing against teams from nearly 90 schools and colleges from as far away as Germany, Russia,
India and Ethiopia. The goal? To design, build and race lightweight, human-powered
vehicles over a half-mile of lunar-like terrain. Success rested on finding innovative solutions to engineering challenges similar to those
faced in building the actual all-terrain vehicles used on the moon.

Last year RISD was the first art and design
school ever to enter the race and took home third place. This year students
spent late nights and countless hours building a better buggy, hoping that the
many changes and enhancements they made would help them improve on last
year’s finish.

The
Moonbuggy competition is just one of several ways that RISD and NASA have been working together for
more than 15 years. Other collaborative projects have had Industrial Design
students looking at design for extreme
environments,
managing information overload and other innovative solutions for living and working
in zero-gravity.